CHAPTER XVII.

"DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES."

"So, Master Sheriff," muttered Rumsey, as he stood coolly watching the thin stream of blood trickling slowly from the prostrate body of his victim, "that is one of you ticked off, at all events. It was such a pity you should be calling names for nothing, wasn't it? and wasps like you are mightily troublesome, not to say dangerous; for who's to guess where you mightn't go buzzing our plans? Not dead yet, aren't you?" he went on scowlingly, as a low groan broke from Goodenough's lips. "Why, you yelled out loud enough for a dozen men. I swear I could almost have fancied 'twas a woman's screech, 'twas so shrill;" and he looked round as he spoke. "But then one might fancy anything in this charnel hole of a place;" and again he cast covert glances at the shadows thrown upon the wainscotting by the flicker of the expiring lamp; and crossing to one of the windows, he looked out through the murky darkness, towards a light gleaming steadily in the far distance. "Cold as charity it is too. I'd give a gold piece to be out of this, and drying before the kitchen fire over at the Thatched House at Hoddesdon yonder, with a cup of mulled sack and a tender cut.--The mischief seize you!" he growled on, as a deep groan from the wounded man arrested his speculations, and turning sharply on him he saw Goodenough feebly move his right hand towards his breast. "Not still yet? Hang it! Richard Rumsey never pinned a jerkin so clumsily before. Want it pulled out, do you?" he continued, with a brutal laugh, as he came close up beside his victim, and stooping over him, plucked the poignard from his breast. "Have your way, then. But don't be saying it's my fault, if your last gasp comes with it." Then with savage indifference he saw the ebbing thread of life-blood swell into a stream let loose by the removal of the weapon, and the limbs relax, while the face grows gray and fixed. "So, I thought as much. Well, go your ways friend, to your journey's end, and keep yourself ready when you get there, to welcome the Blackbird and the Chaffinch when they knock. And now I think I'll be going my road;" and Rumsey glanced meditatively towards the window. "Another time will serve to explain to Captain Hannibal how you got yourself into this coil. Stay," and he slowly lifted the blood-stained poignard still dangling in his fingers. "A mighty excellent notion!"

[Sidenote: The assassin.]

Kneeling down by the wounded man's side, he wrenched open the clenched fingers of his right hand, and thrust the hilt of the dagger between them. "Yes," he muttered; "that will tell its own tale. And now for the Thatched House."

Returning to the window, and craning out his neck, Rumsey spent several minutes, first in consideration of the projecting corbels and cornices, and the stout web work of ivy covering the walls; then drawing his head back again, he fell to scowling contemplation of his lamed foot. Once on terra firma, nothing, he knew, was easier than to find the postern; and if by ill luck it should be locked, the trees bordering the walls on their inner side would assist him to scale them, and so away across the Rye by the bridges.

Only the first step was the hard one; but the guilty man knew there was no choice for him but to grapple with it; and after one or two clumsy failures, he succeeded in at last obtaining a firm footing on the window ledge.

[Sidenote: An unexpected appearance.]

Scarcely had he accomplished this feat, than a flash of light broke across his eyes, with such startling suddenness that it caused him to sway forward, and he would have dropped headlong into the moat, had he not stretched out both hands, clinging for dear life to the stout old ivy trails; and by a wrench and a twist that for some hours afterward he did not forget, held on by the jutting stone-work of the window, staring helplessly into the room at the figure of a man, who stood lantern in hand, in the arch of the door facing him. "Hullo!" he cried.

"The same to you, colonel," laughingly returned the voice of Lawrence Lee. "What in the name of Fortune are you about there? Marry! 'Tis an odd time of night to be practising gymnastics!"

"Lend me a hand for mercy's sake!" gasped Rumsey, "or I shall fall and break my neck."

"And it would be such a pity that, eh, colonel?" laughed Lee, as he ran forward. "Have with you then."

"Great heaven!" he cried, stumbling in his haste head foremost across the body of Goodenough; "what have we here? Sheriff Goodenough!" he continued in horrified amazement, as he turned his lantern light on the pale still face, and perceived the pool of blood it lay weltering in. "Dead? Murdered?"

Rumsey shrugged his shoulders with an air of cool indifference.

"Man!" shouted Lee, turning on Rumsey. "What is the meaning of this?"

"Pooh! nonsense!" replied Rumsey, as well as his almost spent breath permitted him. "Dead! Well, like enough; but murdered--Here, hi! lend a hand, can't you?"

[Sidenote: Saved for the gallows.]

Lawrence complied; but the hand he placed at Rumsey's disposal was no very gentle one, and he hauled him to the floor like a sack of bones. "Speak, man!" he cried.

"Well, give me breathing time," answered Rumsey, shaking himself; and then, glancing askance at the dark mass upon the floor, he growled sulkily, "What is it? What do you want to know? Murdered? Well, killing's no murder, I take it, when a man is driven to it in self-defence."

"Self-defence!"

"Ay. There's no telling where I mightn't be now, if this quarrelsome fellow here, had got the best of me. Don't you see the dagger there in his hand?"

"Where are you hurt?" asked Lawrence, looking from the dagger to Rumsey.

"I?--I?--Oh!" stammered Rumsey confusedly; "well, well, 'tis nothing to speak of. A scratch; hardly a mere scratch."

"Who's dagger is this?" demanded Lee, stooping down, and closely inspecting the weapon in Goodenough's grasp.

"Whose should it be?" rejoined Rumsey, letting his eyes fall shiftily beneath the penetrating glance of Lee, as it fell on him.

"Faith! well, only I never knew him to carry so much as a bare bodkin about him," said Lawrence.

[Sidenote: The traitor's tale.]

"Then that shows how little you do know him," retorted Rumsey. "A more bloodthirsty, cantankerous fellow than he is, isn't to be found among the lot of us. Why, he's for lopping everybody who doesn't say 'snap' to his 'snip.'"

"'Tis very strange," said Lee thoughtfully.

"A nice thing," grumbled on Rumsey, letting his eyes rest on Lee's left hand, which hung straight down beside him. "A nice thing to attack a man in this fashion, as if he was a viper in a rut. And it's preciously fortunate I'm always prepared for any surprise. You'd find it a hard matter to catch Richard Rumsey on the hip;" and he smiled a smile of infinite self-complacency. "What's that dangling in your fingers there?"

[Sidenote: The key.]

"Only the key of the tower door," absently replied Lee. "But," he went on, again keenly glancing over Rumsey's figure: "it takes two to a fair fight--and a pair of weapons. Where is yours?"

"Hadn't I my choice of twoscore at least out of the toys there?" said Rumsey after an instant's silence, and pointing to the oaken chest. "If you doubt it look for yourself. A real embarrassment of riches, eh?" he went on, watching Lee's face, as he lifted the lid of the chest and stood gazing at its gleaming contents. "Enough to do for a score of lives if one had 'em. But the best of us has but one in this bad world," he continued, piously turning up his eyes; "and Providence has spared me, as you see, from the sword of the ungodly. I'd have given my best firelock, though, it had not happened;" and for once Rumsey spoke pure and simple truth. "The fellow had his faults, but I had a great respect for him."

"And is that what sent you clearing off in such a hurry?" asked Lawrence, turning contemptuously from Rumsey, and kneeling down beside Goodenough's motionless body he set his lantern on the floor, and the key beside it, and raised the wounded man's head; "and leaving him in this state?"

"Well, you see--" but here a violent fit of coughing interfered with Colonel Rumsey's powers of articulation. "Hang that open window!" he said, when speech at last returned; "'tis enough to give a man his death," he went on, as he closed the pane with such violence that the draught from it extinguished the dying flame of the lamp. "It was--h'm--h'm--it was awkward, don't you see, being found here, with--with no one to tell the tale but myself, as it were; for dead men tell none," he added with a low chuckle.

"He's not dead," said Lawrence, placing his hand on Goodenough's heart.

"Bah! dead as a door-nail. I'm mightily sorry for it, to be sure; but the fellow brought it on himself. What could I do? Necessity knows no law."

[Sidenote: In the dark.]

And Rumsey, stooping down over Lee as if to scrutinize the countenance lying pillowed on the young man's arm, contrived to let his hand drop well over the key upon the floor. Then clutching the ring of the lantern, he paused and repeated his observation. "Take my word for it. He's dead as a door-nail. Good-night, Master Lee. I'll leave you to explain matters, if it's all the same to you."

Lee looked up. Absorbed in his efforts to staunch the flow of blood from Goodenough's wound, he had hardly heard Rumsey's last words. As, however, he raised his head the door fell softly to, and he found himself in total darkness.